Creating new perspectives since 2009
Items by Dr Binoy Kampmark
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More parleying nonsense: Trump, Iran and promised negotiations
It’s almost not worth considering, but precisely because it comes from the White House, the mad manoeuvrings and silly airings of the US President must be taken seriously. But only to a point. Over the last week, a series of events have taken place demonstrating the growing alarm within the…
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Tremors in MAGA: Joe Kent, the Iran war and the antisemitism smear
Joe Kent, the now former US Director of the National Counterterrorism Center, always seemed a bit off, especially to liberals. As a combat veteran of MAGA pedigree, he found favour with President Donald J. Trump, who rewarded him for his conspiracy blustering in a manner befitting other nominees baptised in…
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No naval escort for Trump: US allies and the Strait of Hormuz
With each dragged out day, President Donald Trump begins resembling a mad emperor who has not only taken leave of his senses but leave of everything else. Having hitched his wagon to the Israeli program of chaos and destabilisation in the Middle East, he is stuck in a war he…
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Opportunistic asylum: How Australia exploited the Iranian women’s football team
When it comes to asylum seekers, the Australian political machine has prided itself on using cruelty and a purposely obtuse understanding of international law. Bolted sovereignty has been elevated over rights and humanitarianism, while political interests have abominated the dark, hungering hordes heading to the island continent on unseaworthy boats. …
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Blocking fertilisers: The Hormuz Strait and agricultural shock
The closure of virtually all commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz occasioned by the Iran War is not merely a matter of oil and gas, the usual prized duo that feature in the nervous chatter of global markets. There are other less conspicuous products that have also been snared…
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Costly and depleting: The growing problems of Operation Epic Fury
The big drain on military resources has begun. A war apparently already won (and not), against an adversary supposedly without means to fight back, its air force and navy destroyed, its missile capabilities blunted, is now drawing the clumsy colossus of American power into the Middle East with embarrassing effect. …
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Existential attrition: Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz
“The geopolitical genie is out of the bottle: by capitalizing on geography to disrupt global trade, countries can strengthen their strategic position at relatively low cost.” Alex Mills, The Atlantic Council, March 12, 2026 With each day of glorified actions against Iran, with each cloudy press session claiming supreme success…
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Middle power nonsense: Australia, Canada and capitulating to the Iran War
In his January speech at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney gave the impression of a banker turned soothsayer, a Daniel coming to judgment. Here was a born-again man of international relations who would rally the middle powers (from the middle) and try to assert…
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Starmer’s self-defence fudge: The UK’s growing involvement in the Iran War
Wars can distract, and for leaders in political purgatory, they can be particularly useful. It remains to be seen whether the UK’s increasing involvement in the illegal war being waged on Iran by Israel and the United States will serve that purpose. Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, the great saviour…
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Loony bin rationales: The continuing war on Iran
Villainous lunacy is abundant these days as the bombing of Iran by Israel and the United States continues. The rationale for this illegal pre-emptive war that not only lacks legitimacy but should land its perpetrators in the docks of the International Criminal Court, continues to get increasingly muddled. With US…
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Going native in the Trump jungle: How it became legal to attack Iran
The allies of the United States have gone native, feral even, in the jungle of international relations planted by President Donald J. Trump. While we keep hearing about how awful Russia’s war against Ukraine is, with its shattering of international law and its dismissiveness of the provisions of the United…
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Roguish justifications: The apologists for the attack on Iran
February 28, 2026. Another attack, another breach of the United Nations Charter. A gross violation of international law. As usual, a violation celebrated as ethical, necessary, and high-minded in principle by the powerful who dictate such terms. Not squalid, dangerous, destabilising. Not, apparently, following the same pattern as before: interventions…
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Mendacious rationales: The lies behind Operation Lion’s Roar
Many in the United States would scarcely identify the difference between Iran and Iraq, both countries based on ancient civilisations so chronologically distant as to be fiction. If not Marvel, it’s not marvellous. But another fiction came into play towards the end of February as the United States and Israel…
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Biblical writ and Christian Zionism: Mike Huckabee, Tucker Carlson and Israel
It was good of Mike Huckabee, US ambassador to Israel, to come clean with the witchery and superstition that marks the Bible. When a text advocating genocide, ethnic cleansing and dubious real estate advice in the name of a vengeful Sky God becomes foreign policy and the sentiment of an…
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Punishing language: Queensland’s Antisemitism Bill
In a feat of enterprising delusion and sinister suppression, Australia’s second largest state has decided to deal with what it regards as an antisemitic problem. After last December’s attacks on Sydney’s Bondi Beach by two gunmen on attendees of a Hanukkah event that left 15 people dead, it has become…
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Not forgetting the victims: Club Epstein and crimes against humanity
With a sex trafficking, flesh peddling empire of favours, logistics and the good time to be had by the powerful, the gigantic scale of Jeffrey Epstein’s criminal network continues to disturb. The least savoury digital library on the planet, available through the offices of the US Justice Department as the…
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Objective fallacy: Eulogies on the passing of the law based international order
The eulogies are starting to wear thin. The lamented passing of the rules and law-based order only makes sense to those who believed that such rules and laws existed in the first place. How easy to forget that the spanning hegemon of each age always presumes that its laws and…
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Bad Beginnings: The End of New START
How awful could it get? The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) expired on February 5, terminating an era of arms control and imposed limits on lunatically contrived nuclear weapons programs of the United States and Russia. The New START Treaty entered into force on February 5, 2011 and…
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Mandelson: Trapped in the Epstein web
Jeffrey Epstein certainly got around. He moved virally, galloping through the cells of the establishment. What was more, he was permitted to. Dead and buried, the financier, convicted paedophile, sex trafficker, eugenics follower, and the man all in power would want to know, continues to ruin reputations, casting doubt on…
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Precarious invitations: Israel’s President Isaac Herzog’s visit to Australia
Things are getting rather ropey on the invitation of Israeli President Isaac Herzog to visit Australia on 8th February. It came amidst the anguish following the Bondi Beach attacks of 14th December 2025 on attendees of a Hanukkah event by two gunmen, leaving 15 dead. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese…
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Dooming the Chagos deal: The Diego Garcia dilemma
When remote islands start to interest chatterboxes in think tanks and bureaucrats in foreign ministries, we can only assume that some matters will be exaggerated over others. With the Chagos Islands, there is one matter that is hard to exaggerate. The plight of its indigenous population has been horrendous, treated…
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The preaching Pentecostal: Scott Morrison in Israel
Australia’s former Prime Minister and faithful Pentecostal Scott Morrison never passes up the chance to express an opinion if it will net him a reward. As one of various politicians of the right (and far rightist) hue invited by Israel’s Minister for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, Amichai Chikli, he…
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Dancing with European nationalism: Israel’s Generation Truth antisemitism conference
Held between 26th and 27th January at Jerusalem’s International Convention Center and called Generation Truth, the second international conference on combating antisemitism was a picture of cracking contradictions. Organised by Israel’s Minister for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism, Amichai Chikli, it featured speakers from various far-right groups, many European, and…
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The gangster’s brief: The Barr Doctrine, Noriega and Maduro
US President Donald Trump might leave an impression of violent novelty, at least for the leader of a nominal liberal democracy, soiling international relations with the gangster’s touch. This sense of iconoclasm is misplaced. While his conduct regarding the abduction of Nicolás Maduro certainly dumps mightily on the precepts of…